Lecture Notes, Tuesday, June 10: Sonnets by Shakespeare and Spenser, and Epithalamion

10 June 2008
English 3I06 / The Age of Elizabeth I

Sonnets by Shakespeare and Spenser; and Epithalamion

Lecture Outline
*Narcissus and Echo
*Shakespeare and Spenser take on the conventions
~writing
~blazon
~contraries
~New conventions? Life as Theatre and Consummation
*the addition on the Epithalamion

Narcissus and Echo
From http://hompi.sogang.ac.kr/anthony/Classics/OvidEchoNarcissus.htm
*See Shakespeare’s sonnet 1 as an extension of Narcissus and Echo; also Epithalamion

Shakespeare and Spenser (sometimes) Take on the Conventions

Writing
*Shakespeare 55 (459)
*Spenser 1, 3 (pg 244); 75 (pg 247)

Blazon
*Spenser 15 (pg. 244); but in contrast Epithalamion pg. 250 lines 171-180
*Shakespeare 106 (463) and 130 (465)

Contraries
*Spenser 26 (245)
*Shakespeare 138 (465)

Time / mortality trope
*Shakespeare 12 (456); 16 (457); 18 (457); esp. 71 (460) and 74 (461)

New Conventions??
Life as Theatre
*Spenser 54 (345)
*Shakespeare 23 (458)

Separation from the Beloved / Revised as Consummation
Shakespeare Sonnet 20 (457-8)

Rima 190 (Spenser version pg 246, sonnet 67)
Petrarch (), Rima 190 (Italian)
Una candida cerva sopra l'erba
Verde m'apparve, con duo corna d'oro
Fra due riviere, a l'umbra d'un alloro,
Levando 'l sole, a la stagione acerba.
Era sua vista si solce superba,
Ch'i' lasciai per seguirla ogni lavoro;
Come l'avaro che 'n cercar tesoro
Con diletto l'affanno disacerba.
'Nessun mi tocchi.' al bel collo d'intorno
Scritto avea di diamanti e di topazi;
'Libera farmi al mio Cesare parve.'
Et era 'l sol gia volto al mezzo giorno;
Gli occhi miei stanchi di mirar, non sazi;
Quand'io caddi ne l'acqua, at ella sparve.

Petrarch (), Rima 190 (English)
A white hind in a green glade
Appeared to me, with two gold horns,
Between two streams, in the shade of a laurel
At sunrise, in a bitterly cold season.
Her appearance was so sweetly haughty
That I left any work I had to follow her,
Like the miser who, looking for treasure,
Sweetens his bitterness with delight.
'Touch me not.' around her lovely neck
Was written with stones of diamond and topaz,
'It has please my lord to set me free.'
And the sun was already turned toward noon;
My weary eyes hadn't had enough of admiring,
When I fell in the water, and she was gone.

Sir Thomas Wyatt
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, alas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I, by no means, my wearied mind
Draw from the dear, but as she fleeth afore,
Fainting I follow. I leave off, therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put them out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about,
'Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.'
Based on Petrarch's Rima 190

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), Amoretti 67
Lyke as a huntsman after weary chase,
Seeing the game from him escapt away
Sits downe to rest him in some shady place,
With panting hounds beguiled of their pray:
So after long pursuit and vaine assay,
When I all weary had the chace forsooke,
The gentile deare returnd the selfe-same way,
Thinking to quench her thirst at the next brooke.
There she beholding me with mylder looke,
Sought not to fly, but fearelesse still did bide:
Till I in hand her yet halfe trembling tooke,
And with her owne goodwill hir fyrmely tyde.
Strange thing me seemd to see a beast so wylf,
So goodly wonne with her owne will beguyld.
Based on Petrarch's Rima 190


Spenser’s Epithalamion
*modeled after classical poets Sappho and Catullus: invocation of Muses; description of wedding; and comsummation
*a “wedding” of classical convention with the 16th century sonnet form, esp. the story of Narcissus and Echo
*also related to the carpe diem tradition (pg. 252 lines 296+ “Now”)
*note end of Epithalamion (paradox)